'Helpless' vs 'Life On Mars'

[Quaco]

Deja Vu

This album was my introduction to C, S, N and Y, and in that context, it seemed Young was clearly the least talented writer of the four, mostly due to "Helpless". I didn't even pay "Country Girl" much mind for the longest time because "Helpless" was so boring to my ears. The Stills, Crosby, and Nash stuff was so much more interesting. Yeah, the ensuing 40 years has changed things in that I realized that Young was one with by far the most good material -- but still, as far as that album is concerned, I feel "Helpless" is the low point. I like the song alright, mind you.

[toomanyhatz]

"Country Girl" is great - the better of the two. Also his only prog suite.

Mind you, when I was younger I liked the Nash stuff. Sounds pretty sappy to my ears now (despite being enlivened a bit by Garcia's pedal steel).

[Minnie the Minx]

I am a novice guitarist trying to do lots of songwriting. I am a long way from where I would like to be in my technical abilities, though I am better than I was this time last year, and certainly the year before that. Starting to write songs has made me listen to everything from a slightly different point of view. I find ideas and lyrics very easy - though I didn't at first - but the ability to make my guitar playing sound effortless is years down the line unless I suddenly find myself with hours a day to devote to it.

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".
A song doesn't necessarily become great because you are in awe of the sheer spirit that created it, but even so, the song is like something that has appeared from a puff of smoke or been carved out of some kind of glacier from a planet we don't know about. Not only that, once it begins you're picked up by the scruff of your neck and forcefully seated and made to bear witness to a scene that unfurls. Once you've watched that scene in your head, it then hangs round with you for the rest of your life in different guises and it will only take the silly piano intro to project you there again.

If I could write a song like that, just one, I would be beside myself. I never will. I may be a Bowie enthusiast, but he has done plenty of stuff that moves me not one inch. I'm not voting for this song because it is Bowie - it is because it is Life on Mars. Every time I hear it I'm in awe of it, without fail.

[Robert]

I am a novice guitarist trying to do lots of songwriting. I am a long way from where I would like to be in my technical abilities, though I am better than I was this time last year, and certainly the year before that. Starting to write songs has made me listen to everything from a slightly different point of view. I find ideas and lyrics very easy - though I didn't at first - but the ability to make my guitar playing sound effortless is years down the line unless I suddenly find myself with hours a day to devote to it.

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".
A song doesn't necessarily become great because you are in awe of the sheer spirit that created it, but even so, the song is like something that has appeared from a puff of smoke or been carved out of some kind of glacier from a planet we don't know about. Not only that, once it begins you're picked up by the scruff of your neck and forcefully seated and made to bear witness to a scene that unfurls. Once you've watched that scene in your head, it then hangs round with you for the rest of your life in different guises and it will only take the silly piano intro to project you there again.

If I could write a song like that, just one, I would be beside myself. I never will. I may be a Bowie enthusiast, but he has done plenty of stuff that moves me not one inch. I'm not voting for this song because it is Bowie - it is because it is Life on Mars. Every time I hear it I'm in awe of it, without fail.

Of course LOM wins this hands hands down. Nevertheless, Hepless is still a considerable song / certianly not a song anybody can come up with through mere persistence.

[naughty boy]

Musically it's exactly the kind of thing anybody can come up with!

That chord sequence had already been used umpteen times before NY got hold of it. It isn't even particularly evocative or uplifting.

[Minnie the Minx]

I am a novice guitarist trying to do lots of songwriting. I am a long way from where I would like to be in my technical abilities, though I am better than I was this time last year, and certainly the year before that. Starting to write songs has made me listen to everything from a slightly different point of view. I find ideas and lyrics very easy - though I didn't at first - but the ability to make my guitar playing sound effortless is years down the line unless I suddenly find myself with hours a day to devote to it.

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".
A song doesn't necessarily become great because you are in awe of the sheer spirit that created it, but even so, the song is like something that has appeared from a puff of smoke or been carved out of some kind of glacier from a planet we don't know about. Not only that, once it begins you're picked up by the scruff of your neck and forcefully seated and made to bear witness to a scene that unfurls. Once you've watched that scene in your head, it then hangs round with you for the rest of your life in different guises and it will only take the silly piano intro to project you there again.

If I could write a song like that, just one, I would be beside myself. I never will. I may be a Bowie enthusiast, but he has done plenty of stuff that moves me not one inch. I'm not voting for this song because it is Bowie - it is because it is Life on Mars. Every time I hear it I'm in awe of it, without fail.

Of course LOM wins this hands hands down. Nevertheless, Hepless is still a considerable song / certianly not a song anybody can come up with through mere persistence.

Give me ten years and I bet I can!
Meet you here in 2027!

[Robert]

I am a novice guitarist trying to do lots of songwriting. I am a long way from where I would like to be in my technical abilities, though I am better than I was this time last year, and certainly the year before that. Starting to write songs has made me listen to everything from a slightly different point of view. I find ideas and lyrics very easy - though I didn't at first - but the ability to make my guitar playing sound effortless is years down the line unless I suddenly find myself with hours a day to devote to it.

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".
A song doesn't necessarily become great because you are in awe of the sheer spirit that created it, but even so, the song is like something that has appeared from a puff of smoke or been carved out of some kind of glacier from a planet we don't know about. Not only that, once it begins you're picked up by the scruff of your neck and forcefully seated and made to bear witness to a scene that unfurls. Once you've watched that scene in your head, it then hangs round with you for the rest of your life in different guises and it will only take the silly piano intro to project you there again.

If I could write a song like that, just one, I would be beside myself. I never will. I may be a Bowie enthusiast, but he has done plenty of stuff that moves me not one inch. I'm not voting for this song because it is Bowie - it is because it is Life on Mars. Every time I hear it I'm in awe of it, without fail.

Of course LOM wins this hands hands down. Nevertheless, Hepless is still a considerable song / certianly not a song anybody can come up with through mere persistence.

Give me ten years and I bet I can!
Meet you here in 2027!

That’s the spirit!!

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Anna

[Davey the Fat Boy]

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".

I’ll attempt to prefect the future here and tell you that you likely won’t. I’ve written songs a long time. It’s not as easy as you think to write something simple and memorable.

More to the point, you’ll likely never write something like it because you don’t value it. You’ll do like most other songwriters have for the last several decades...you’ll look for something different in the chords or melody or words to show how much value you contributed to the song.

This has been the trap that almost every songwriter since Young has fallen into. Look at the songwriting heroes who emerged in his wake. Guys like Elvis Costello and Tom Waits...always over-egging the soup. Never completely trusting the power of three chords and the truth. In some ways Bowie is The godfather of writers and performers having to justify themselves by trying to contribute something obviously unique to every song they touch. Eventually leaving us here, in a world where will argue the merits of a song by the degree of difficulty they imagine it took to write it rather than its ability to connect.

The hardest thing in the world for a songwriter is to take those same three chords we’ve all heard before and come up with a song that feels singular. A lot of us have tried more than 10 years to crack that code.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

None of which is meant to say that you won’t write perfectly good songs BTW. But spend a few years trying to write something like that, and you’ll see what I mean.

[Minnie the Minx]

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".

I’ll attempt to prefect the future here and tell you that you likely won’t. I’ve written songs a long time. It’s not as easy as you think to write something simple and memorable.

More to the point, you’ll likely never write something like it because you don’t value it. You’ll do like most other songwriters have for the last several decades...you’ll look for something different in the chords or melody or words to show how much value you contributed to the song.

This has been the trap that almost every songwriter since Young has fallen into. Look at the songwriting heroes who emerged in his wake. Guys like Elvis Costello and Tom Waits...always over-egging the soup. Never completely trusting the power of three chords and the truth. In some ways Bowie is The godfather of writers and performers having to justify themselves by trying to contribute something obviously unique to every song they touch. Eventually leaving us here, in a world where will argue the merits of a song by the degree of difficulty they imagine it took to write it rather than its ability to connect.

The hardest thing in the world for a songwriter is to take those same three chords we’ve all heard before and come up with a song that feels singular. A lot of us have tried more than 10 years to crack that code.

You're making enormous and inaccurate leaps about what it is about Life on Mars that slays me. At no point in what I have written do I discuss how great it is that the song has 3796 chords. I am talking about the song's magical qualities - which you either get or you don't. The ability of it to transport you somewhere that you'll never find on a map. Other songs that give me the same thrill - Everybody's Talking, Whole Wide World, give me similar thrills without complexity. You could say that the Wreckless Eric tune is as raw and honest as the day is long, but I will never write a song like it.

[Bent Fabric]

In some ways Bowie is The godfather of writers and performers having to justify themselves by trying to contribute something obviously unique to every song they touch.

And others might opine that Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, George Gershwin, and any number of people who notoriously used an expansive harmonic palate were kicking that can down the road well before Bowie got there.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

The point of writing all that is that even acknowledging all that, I am fairly confident that in about 10 years time I could write something similar to "Helpless", whereas if I lived until the ends of time, I know that I could never even imagine sitting down and writing anything like "Life on Mars".

I’ll attempt to prefect the future here and tell you that you likely won’t. I’ve written songs a long time. It’s not as easy as you think to write something simple and memorable.

More to the point, you’ll likely never write something like it because you don’t value it. You’ll do like most other songwriters have for the last several decades...you’ll look for something different in the chords or melody or words to show how much value you contributed to the song.

This has been the trap that almost every songwriter since Young has fallen into. Look at the songwriting heroes who emerged in his wake. Guys like Elvis Costello and Tom Waits...always over-egging the soup. Never completely trusting the power of three chords and the truth. In some ways Bowie is The godfather of writers and performers having to justify themselves by trying to contribute something obviously unique to every song they touch. Eventually leaving us here, in a world where will argue the merits of a song by the degree of difficulty they imagine it took to write it rather than its ability to connect.

The hardest thing in the world for a songwriter is to take those same three chords we’ve all heard before and come up with a song that feels singular. A lot of us have tried more than 10 years to crack that code.

You're making enormous and inaccurate leaps about what it is about Life on Mars that slays me. At no point in what I have written do I discuss how great it is that the song has 3796 chords. I am talking about the song's magical qualities - which you either get or you don't. The ability of it to transport you somewhere that you'll never find on a map. Other songs that give me the same thrill - Everybody's Talking, Whole Wide World, give me similar thrills without complexity. You could say that the Wreckless Eric tune is as raw and honest as the day is long, but I will never write a song like it.

I don’t think I did make that leap.

I didn’t offer any theory about what you like about LOM. What I’m saying is...you vastly underestimate the challenge of writing a song like Helpless.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

In some ways Bowie is The godfather of writers and performers having to justify themselves by trying to contribute something obviously unique to every song they touch.

And others might opine that Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, George Gershwin, and any number of people who notoriously used an expansive harmonic palate were kicking that can down the road well before Bowie got there.

True enough...but Bowie expanded it beyond the harmonic palate AND lyrical abstraction to add visual and theatrical elements. At the very least, he drastically upped the “tah-dah!!” factor from where all of those guys were.

[toomanyhatz]

"Ta-da" factor meaning, I assume, that he wrote the song with the purpose of impressing? A pretty huge leap.

I can only speak for myself, but I've written a lot of songs in my life, and the ones that I think are most successful are the ones that came to me most naturally. I can think of two in particular. One has three chords. One has several key changes and several time signature changes. They both SOUND direct to me, but they use totally different methods to get there. In neither case was I attempting to make it more or less simple.

I also find the way that Bowie slips from the very simple melody in the verses to the very grand, theatrical chorus (some probably hear it as overwrought, but I think it earns its grandeur in the contrast) impressive mainly because, to my ears, he makes it sound so effortless.

Anyway, not sure I have a point here other than "music is subjective," which is not really much of a point, particularly on a board that thrives on extreme statements like the one you made earlier. But I do think you're making a lot of logistic leaps in assuming that people have similar ears, and if they don't hear things the same way you do, it's because they're 'blocked' in some way by their prejudices or expectations. Is it at all possible you hear the 'ta-da!' factor due to your assumptions about Bowie and how others hear him?

[Bent Fabric]

True enough...but Bowie expanded it beyond the harmonic palate AND lyrical abstraction to add visual and theatrical elements. At the very least, he drastically upped the “tah-dah!!” factor from where all of those guys were.

What year did "MacArthur Park" come out?

Seriously, though - if we're discussing his music ('LOM', specifically...but, I dunno, 'Space Oddity' seems no less relevant as shorthand for 'emotionally resonant AND expansive'), I don't personally find the more striking, ambitious or advanced elements any more jarring or contrived than things that had existed in other people's works (I mean, you start comparing someone like Laura Nyro to Willie Dixon or Merle Haggard, and anyone could claim any number of things about comparative fussiness and perceived 'vanity of intent').

I dunno...Brel, Brecht, Rodgers and Hammerstein, etc. - and I'm only omitting jazz and classical as a means of "going reasonably concise" with my end of this conversation - all producing fanciful work that people would choose to cover in any number of idioms or emulate/incorporate in some way. I suppose the "grandness" or "showiness" of things is not a sword on which I necessarily want to see Bowie impaled to any greater extent than he legitimately deserves. I mean, I get what nathan meant all those years back when he said that Side One of Diamond Dogs reminded him of Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I think there's a hell of a lot more to Bowie's music than that - specifically an elemental and emotional core that is mostly all we're left with nearly half a century on from the age of him, Alice Cooper, the Pink Floyd, the Move, the Velvet Underground, the Doors, etc. all seeking to expand the format of live music in one way or another. I look at prime Bowie the same way I look at every song I've ever loved or admired - just the work of another person chasing a meaningful or resonant organic idea with a butterfly net and hoping to document it. And occasionally hitting the mark with exceptional impact.

Naturally, I take your meaning re: things like the 12 bar format or a three note melody over three chords being a hell of a challenging place to create magic. Why, only yesterday, I was marveling at the Doors' performance/arrangement of "Back Door Man" on the first record and thinking "at least 99 out of 100 performers would struggle to ignite the compelling essence of this particular song in any useful way". We say similar things about AC/DC. As a writer, I look for my own reflection in that type of trad. arr. simplicity and I mostly struggle to see it. I don't think that necessarily speaks to the inherent greatness or superiority of a lower chord number (and I count myself as a Neil obsessive/disciple who ultimately finds 'Helpless' pretty disposable) - but, yes, I'm always secretly proud if I'm able to make the lightning strike with an unusually small number of tools/ingredients.

It's an analysis that can get needlessly circular - why do I see multitudes within one pathologically basic thing and not another? Why does one seemingly complex thing look like God's own handwriting and why does another look like a clumsy kid wearing a "genius costume" (I'm no massive Costello fan as it happens)? I don't want to say it's a total red herring - but I would certainly say that the (in no way unanimously perceived) failings and successes of these two songs may reside in any number of places no matter how much we're drawn to identify the (obviously, far more quantifiable) HOW rather than the WHY.

[Minnie the Minx]

"Ta-da" factor meaning, I assume, that he wrote the song with the purpose of impressing? A pretty huge leap.

I can only speak for myself, but I've written a lot of songs in my life, and the ones that I think are most successful are the ones that came to me most naturally. I can think of two in particular. One has three chords. One has several key changes and several time signature changes. They both SOUND direct to me, but they use totally different methods to get there. In neither case was I attempting to make it more or less simple.

I also find the way that Bowie slips from the very simple melody in the verses to the very grand, theatrical chorus (some probably hear it as overwrought, but I think it earns its grandeur in the contrast) impressive mainly because, to my ears, he makes it sound so effortless.

Anyway, not sure I have a point here other than "music is subjective," which is not really much of a point, particularly on a board that thrives on extreme statements like the one you made earlier. But I do think you're making a lot of logistic leaps in assuming that people have similar ears, and if they don't hear things the same way you do, it's because they're 'blocked' in some way by their prejudices or expectations. Is it at all possible you hear the 'ta-da!' factor due to your assumptions about Bowie and how others hear him?

Yes!

[Minnie the Minx]

True enough...but Bowie expanded it beyond the harmonic palate AND lyrical abstraction to add visual and theatrical elements. At the very least, he drastically upped the “tah-dah!!” factor from where all of those guys were.

What year did "MacArthur Park" come out?

Seriously, though - if we're discussing his music ('LOM', specifically...but, I dunno, 'Space Oddity' seems no less relevant as shorthand for 'emotionally resonant AND expansive'), I don't personally find the more striking, ambitious or advanced elements any more jarring or contrived than things that had existed in other people's works (I mean, you start comparing someone like Laura Nyro to Willie Dixon or Merle Haggard, and anyone could claim any number of things about comparative fussiness and perceived 'vanity of intent').

I dunno...Brel, Brecht, Rodgers and Hammerstein, etc. - and I'm only omitting jazz and classical as a means of "going reasonably concise" with my end of this conversation - all producing fanciful work that people would choose to cover in any number of idioms or emulate/incorporate in some way. I suppose the "grandness" or "showiness" of things is not a sword on which I necessarily want to see Bowie impaled to any greater extent than he legitimately deserves. I mean, I get what nathan meant all those years back when he said that Side One of Diamond Dogs reminded him of Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I think there's a hell of a lot more to Bowie's music than that - specifically an elemental and emotional core that is mostly all we're left with nearly half a century on from the age of him, Alice Cooper, the Pink Floyd, the Move, the Velvet Underground, the Doors, etc. all seeking to expand the format of live music in one way or another. I look at prime Bowie the same way I look at every song I've ever loved or admired - just the work of another person chasing a meaningful or resonant organic idea with a butterfly net and hoping to document it. And occasionally hitting the mark with exceptional impact.

Naturally, I take your meaning re: things like the 12 bar format or a three note melody over three chords being a hell of a challenging place to create magic. Why, only yesterday, I was marveling at the Doors' performance/arrangement of "Back Door Man" on the first record and thinking "at least 99 out of 100 performers would struggle to ignite the compelling essence of this particular song in any useful way". We say similar things about AC/DC. As a writer, I look for my own reflection in that type of trad. arr. simplicity and I mostly struggle to see it. I don't think that necessarily speaks to the inherent greatness or superiority of a lower chord number (and I count myself as a Neil obsessive/disciple who ultimately finds 'Helpless' pretty disposable) - but, yes, I'm always secretly proud if I'm able to make the lightning strike with an unusually small number of tools/ingredients.

It's an analysis that can get needlessly circular - why do I see multitudes within one pathologically basic thing and not another? Why does one seemingly complex thing look like God's own handwriting and why does another look like a clumsy kid wearing a "genius costume" (I'm no massive Costello fan as it happens)? I don't want to say it's a total red herring - but I would certainly say that the (in no way unanimously perceived) failings and successes of these two songs may reside in any number of places no matter how much we're drawn to identify the (obviously, far more quantifiable) HOW rather than the WHY.

Nods

[Davey the Fat Boy]

Maybe I should have called it the “ejaculating wizard” factor.

I’m not really attempting to moralize about the right way to write songs. I’m simply saying that Bowie saw himself as a conceptual artist, and he wrote songs like one. That’s not intended as a cut. It’s just a different set of intentions than Neil Young generally has had.

If you go back over this thread there are a lot of dismissals of Helpless on the basis of its perceived lack of sophistication. Apparently it’s a song any of us could write with some practice.

Those aren’t my blind spots.

[Minnie the Minx]

[Davey the Fat Boy]

True enough...but Bowie expanded it beyond the harmonic palate AND lyrical abstraction to add visual and theatrical elements. At the very least, he drastically upped the “tah-dah!!” factor from where all of those guys were.

What year did "MacArthur Park" come out?

Seriously, though - if we're discussing his music ('LOM', specifically...but, I dunno, 'Space Oddity' seems no less relevant as shorthand for 'emotionally resonant AND expansive'), I don't personally find the more striking, ambitious or advanced elements any more jarring or contrived than things that had existed in other people's works (I mean, you start comparing someone like Laura Nyro to Willie Dixon or Merle Haggard, and anyone could claim any number of things about comparative fussiness and perceived 'vanity of intent').

I don’t think I intended to suggest that Bowie somehow invented musical sophistication (though on BCB, you can usually safely credit him with inventing everything). Let’s face it...he’s not THAT sophisticated musically.

What I’m saying is that he brought it back to himself in a way that few artists before him did. MacArthur Park had grand ambitions, but they weren’t about fueling the Jimmy Webb mystique. Ultimately Bowie’s songs are almost always about whatever they are about AND the impenetrability of the guy delivering them.

He wasn’t pop’s first auteur. But he remains its most about-being-an-auteur auteur.